The Power of A Single Orange

Just read a marvelous story about small, in Dreidels on the Brain, by Joel Ben Izzy. It’s the simple story of one orange saving a life. The story takes place during the Holocaust, at Auschwitz, where a boy happens to see an orange on the other side of a fence. By squirming and stretching and squirming and stretching, he manages to reach the orange. He hides the orange near his bed, and each night slips it out from its hiding place to breathe in its scent. Sometimes he scrapes a bit of skin off to intensify the aroma. After an especially grueling day, he peels the orange and distributes the segments to those around him. But even with its flesh gone, the orange skin continues to connect the boy to life. Much, much later, he is liberated, and for the rest of his life, he carries an orange with him at all times. One orange is, after all, what kept him alive and imbued him with hope throughout the darkest of times.